IT 7000 Systems Analytics & Enterprise Management EMBA Week ✓ Solved

IT 7000 Systems Analytics & Enterprise Management EMBA Week 3:

A university database contains information about professors (identified by social security number, or SSN) and courses (identified by course_id). Professors teach courses; each of the following situations concerns the Teaches relationship set. For each situation, draw an ER diagram that describes it (assuming that no further constraints hold). 1. Professors can teach the same course in several semesters, and each offering must be recorded. 2. Professors can teach the same course in several semesters, and only the most recent such offering needs to be recorded (assume this condition applies in all subsequent questions). 3. Every professor must teach some course. 4. Every professor teaches exactly one course. 5. Every professor teaches exactly one course and every course must be taught by some professor. 6. Now suppose that certain courses can be taught by the team of professors jointly, but it is possible that no one professor in a team can teach the course. Model this situation introducing additional entity set, and relationship sets if necessary. Design and draw an ER diagram for the following collection of data. Use only the basic ER model.

Paper For Above Instructions

Entity-Relationship Diagrams (ERDs) are fundamental tools in systems analytics and database design. They provide a visual representation of how different entities interact within a system, capturing essential data relationships necessary for effective database implementation. In this paper, we will develop ERDs based on the specified relationship sets concerning professors and courses in a university context. We will analyze the requirements sequentially, ensuring we meet each specified condition as noted in the assignment.

1. Professors can teach the same course in several semesters, and each offering must be recorded.

In the first scenario, we consider an entity set for 'Professors' and one for 'Courses'. The relationship 'Teaches' will connect these two entities. Each professor will be identified by a unique identifier (SSN), while each course will be identified by a unique course ID. Given that professors may teach the same course across different semesters, we will also capture the 'Semester' attribute in the 'Teaches' relationship to track these offerings. The ER diagram represents 'Professors' and 'Courses' as entities connected by 'Teaches', which has attributes including semester.

2. Professors can teach the same course in several semesters, and only the most recent such offering needs to be recorded.

This scenario modifies the first one by specifying that only the most recent course offering is of interest. To represent this, we will continue to use the same entities, but the 'Teaches' relationship will now only retain one instance of a course per professor, effectively discarding previous instances (if we design the database to reflect this rule). The single 'Teaches' link will still connect 'Professors' and 'Courses'; however, we will include an attribute indicating the 'Teaching Date' and institute a mechanism to update this whenever a new offering occurs.

3. Every professor must teach some course.

Here, we add participation constraints to our ER diagram. We will set a 'mandatory' relationship from 'Professors' to 'Teaches', ensuring that no professor can exist in the system without a corresponding link in 'Teaches', meaning every professor must indeed teach at least one course.

4. Every professor teaches exactly one course.

This restriction tightens the previous relationship. The ER diagram will reflect that each professor is directly associated with exactly one unique course in the 'Teaches' relationship, creating a one-to-one relationship between 'Professors' and 'Courses'. This reinforces the structure where each professor can only have one course they are responsible for, simplifying their role in the system.

5. Every professor teaches exactly one course, and every course must be taught by some professor.

This situation enforces a two-way relationship constraint. The ERD reflects that every professor teaches exactly one course, ensuring a bijective relationship between 'Professors' and 'Courses'. It indicates a 'mandatory' relationship from 'Courses' back to 'Professors', randomly allocating each course a professor.

6. Certain courses can be taught by a team of professors jointly.

In this scenario, we expand the model to accommodate teamwork by introducing an additional entity set termed 'Teams'. Each team of professors can be linked to one course, enabling flexible teaching scenarios where a single course may have multiple professors involved. The 'Teaches' relationship will now be adjusted to include a 'Team ID' attribute, linking this new entity to the existing structure. This requires careful design to ensure that the team's group's representation does not dictate that any one specific member must teach, fulfilling the outlined requirement.

In conclusion, creating ER diagrams based on the above situations allows us to understand the complexities involved in modeling database relationships in academic institutions and helps in visualizing how professors interact with courses in various ways. Each diagram provides clarity on relational attributes and ensures that the conditions specified are effectively addressed according to the requirements of the system.

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